The book series ‘Transforming Communications’ is dedicated to cross-media communication research. It aims to support all kinds of research that are interested in processes of communication taking place across different kinds of media and that subsequently make media’s transformative potential accessible. With this profile, the series addresses a wide range of different areas of study: media production, representation and appropriation as well as media technologies and their use, all from a current as well as a a historical perspective.

The relevance of data for educational processes in schools such as teaching and learning as well as for educational administration and educational policy has increased throughout the last decade. This has an impact on how education is measured, managed and controlled. ‘Governing by numbers’ (Grek 2009) has become a new paradigm.

In one way or the other the current transformation of society is related to media, which are understood to mean organizations, content and technologies. As a consequence, media themselves are gaining increasing relevance in political debates and for political activity per se. Actors like hacker collectives, alternative media or open source movements do not only use media to organize, collaborate and to mobilize, but explicitly center their activities on media-related questions.

“Big data” has become a contested buzzword for media and communications research, but remains a vague concept when it comes to empirical, contextualised analysis and interpretations. From the point of view of the media user and a critical analysis of media practices, it is rather “digital traces” that matter. The term “traces” puts emphasis on the fact that these data result from the practices of individuals, collectivities, and organizations while using digital media. To understand “digital traces” we have to relate them to the various actors who originate them, as well as the contexts that matter.

Memory and media are closely interlinked areas of research: In fact, memory has always materialized through cultural artefacts, various objects and the mediation of images, words and signs. Furthermore, memory as a social construct has a strong collective dimension. Even individuals’ memories can be viewed and made sense of within the context of different collectivities and social formations such as the family, an ethnic community or a nation. Media are essential for these groups to communicate with each other and thereby constitute and negotiate identities, or make sense of the world – past, present and future included.